Share ThisThe Allegheny Health Network Healthy Food Center program has a proven approach to address food insecurity in the western Pennsylvania region. Through this “food pharmacy” program, patients who lack access to food receive a referral for free nutritious food items, education on disease-specific diets and additional resources for other social challenges they may face.
In the video below, AHN clinicians and a Healthy Food Center patient share how this program is making nutritious meals and proactively managing health a reality for more families.
Dr. Brian Lamb: Healthy Living starts with having healthy people. You'll never have a healthy population if you don't start from the very beginning with the people who don't have access to the things that most of us take for granted. And that's why it’s so important that AHN continues to support the Healthy Food Centers
Patricia Kelley: The Healthy Food Center has allowed my life to be less stressful because I don't have to worry about how I'm going to make tomorrow's dinner, or how I'm going to feed the grandkids when they come the next weekend. It's allowed me that peace.
Dr. Elizabeth Cuevas: Healthy Food Centers was one of our first programs within the Center for Inclusion Health. We very early recognized that food is medicine. We learned that by providing healthy food to patients, their health care conditions can improve. So, embedding a Healthy Food Center right in the footprint of the hospital, became a very important feature in our AHN Healthy Food Centers.
Dr. Patricia Bononi: Unless you address everything about the patient — I mean, medicines are easy to prescribe, but you have to treat the whole person to make them healthier.
Dr. Elizabeth Cuevas: If somebody screens positive for food insecurity, that physician or health care worker can write a prescription right in Epic, right in the medical record system, and prescribe that patient food. That patient takes that prescription that gets transmitted electronically to the Healthy Food Center.
Patricia Kelley: When I first arrived at the Healthy Food Center, I was literally blown away at the setup. I was just amazed at all the choices. There was meat, there was fresh fruit, there was fresh vegetables, and there was recipes to go along with the categories of choices, so it was really a great experience.
Dr. Patricia Bononi: First of all, it's healthy, so patients have healthy options. And I think the other advantage is, they shop with a dietitian. So, they're learning while they're shopping, and knowing what are good choices, why they're good choices, and how they should fashion their meals.
Patricia Kelley: Another additional benefit was the transportation program, which they helped set up. That has a driver come and pick me up at my home and bring me to the Healthy Food Center. I take the time to shop, reach out to them, and they send another driver to bring me home. And the food bucks — the food bucks are these paper bucks that you can utilize at certain farmers’ markets and certain stores. It allows you to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables throughout the month until your next appointment at the Healthy Food Center.
Dr. Brian Lamb: We have patients who have heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, a lot of different conditions that we've shown that if you have access to healthy food, it's part of their care. So I've seen patients who are actually able to better manage their health conditions. I've seen patients who've realized how they can eat to help prevent themselves from going into heart failure, to help reduce their blood pressure. I've seen patients who have realized, hey, wait, I understand now I can choose foods that will actually help me lower my A1C and control my diabetes. It doesn't all have to go just through medicine. It's a combination of what I put in my body, what I eat, and following my clinician’s advice.
Patricia Kelley: Without this Healthy Food Center, I can't imagine where I would be. I basically wasn't eating. This allowed me not even just to fill my belly, but fill my grandkid’s belly, and that means everything to me.
Dr. Elizabeth Cuevas: Ultimately, everybody has a right to having healthy food within their lives. And as a health care organization, that's part of our role to figure that out.
Dr. Patricia Bononi: I think it's tremendously important to treat the whole person, and I think for a long time, especially health care providers — I never wrote a prescription before to go to the Healthy Food Center, and now it's become part of my routine.
Dr. Brian Lamb: This is something that really goes beyond any hospital system I’ve worked at. It's groundbreaking. We have to build every person up, one person at a time, so that we can make a difference in their community, and then we can make a difference in the health care in the population of all of western Pennsylvania.
As part of the AHN Center for Inclusion Health, the Healthy Food Centers are embedded directly within the hospital. Across five locations, Allegheny General Hospital, Forbes Hospital, Jefferson Hospital, West Penn Hospital and St. Vincent, this program:
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